Presently, many telecommunications carriers, such as AT&T, use fiber optic cables to carry optically formatted telecommunications traffic between facilities. A typical fiber optic cable comprises one or more individual optical fibers surrounded by a buffer tube that is enclosed by metal jacket covered by a plastic sheath. To repair one of more damaged fibers, a technician must remove a portion of the plastic sheath, the metal jacket and the buffer tube to expose the damaged fiber(s) without causing injury to any undamaged fibers. Heretofore, a technician manually exposed the damaged fiber(s) using a knife or saw, often a slow and dangerous operation. Indeed, technician, despite exercising extreme care, some times would slip with the knife or saw, causing injury as well as possibly damaging one or more undamaged fibers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,877, issued in the name of Patrick McDermott, and originally assigned to AT&T, discloses an apparatus for cutting through the sheath of a fiber optic cable of the type described above to avoid the difficulties associated with sheath removal by hand. The McDermott tool comprises a rotary-driven cut-off wheel enclosed within a guide box so that a portion of the wheel extends beyond the top of the guide box. The box has an upwardly extending end wall in spaced-apart parallelism with the cut-off wheel. The end wall has a generally "U"-shaped notch in its upper edge for seating the cable. By rotating the cable relative to the cut-off wheel, an operator can make a circumferential cut into the cable sheath. Thereafter, the operator removes the cable from the notch and places it in abutment with the end wall to make a cut in the sheath along the longitudinal cable axis.
While the McDermott tool avoids the dangers associated with sheath removal by and, the tool does not generally possess the precision needed for removing the protective layers of an active fiber optic cable without damaging the signal-carrying fibers. Moreover, the McDermott tool does not readily accomplish removal of long longitudinal portions of the cable sheath.
Thus, there is a need for a technique for removing the sheath of a fiber optic cable or the like which overcomes the aforementioned disadvantages of the prior art.